Spin, Spin, Spin, Lie, Lie, Lie, Misdirect, Misdirect, Misdirect, Deny, Deny, Deny
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But those who control the narrative—the government, the largely conservative media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch (Murdoch owns 70 percent of the country’s newspaper circulation), the executives who run the Australian economy—remain the country’s most active obstructionists on climate policy. In an effort to maintain power, they deploy classic gaslighting techniques, but on a national level, making Australians doubt themselves, their intelligence, and, chillingly, their reality. But as climate science proves itself too difficult to refute in its entirety, they’ve doubled down on one tactic in particular: misdirection.
Within these circles, the official narrative seems to be: What summer isn’t complete in Australia without the scent of bushfire in the background—like a candle lit for an extra atmospheric touch? Even now, as the smoke in Sydney reaches levels akin to smoking 37 cigarettes—my dad’s voice breaks, as does my heart, when I call home—powerful media figures spout astonishing lies and distractions. “None of these bushfires were in any way extraordinary compared to not just the last 50 years but indeed the last 150 years,” a political commentator wrote in the Murdoch-owned newspaper the Herald Sun. In the Daily Telegraph, also owned by Murdoch, the Emergency Leaders for Climate Change were dismissed as giving opinions “outside their area of expertise.” On British television, an Australian federal politician speaking to Piers Morgan publicly denied any impact of climate change on the current fire conditions.
Where they can, these politicians and media pundits blame anyone they can, as long as the causes are not climate change or their own actions. Federal officials say state-level politicians in New South Wales refused their help. They point the finger at smaller political parties who have never been in power, even though logic says that these parties have never had the authority to implement whatever policies they’re being blamed for. They issue statements one might expect in The Onion’s satirical coverage with straight faces: The deputy prime minister linked the fires to “self-combusting piles of manure.”
Another Murdoch-owned publication, The Australian, appeared to blame arsonists for the fires. “Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as national arson arrest toll hits 183,” the headline read, as if nearly 200 people had been caught contributing to the current crisis. Like the most effective stories that make us question reality, the story was both wrong and just right enough to be plausible: Police arrested 183 through all of 2019, not simply the latest summer season that started in November last year, and many of the arrests were for improper care with machinery or cigarettes. Police in Victoria have refuted the notion that the fires there were started by arsonists, and there’s no question that climate change has contributed to the fires’ unprecedented spread.
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https://newrepublic.com/article/156194/climate-denial-survives-australia-burns
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